Borrowing Hearts
by The X-Woman
Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate the disappearance of Scully's shoes, resulting in a few major revelations.


Disclaimer: The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, as well as the  
television show "The X-Files" belong to Carter, the Great, Ten-Thirteen  
Productions, Good Ol' FOX, Fair Gillian and Dave. I am only borrowing them, and  
they will be returned washed, dried, and ironed.  
  
Author's Note: Okay, does anyone actually read this part?  
  
Dedication: This is for my mother, for teaching me that Borrowers really do  
exist, and showing me that it's okay to borrow a heart until you find your own.  
  
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Type: Humor/Angst Mulder POV  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoilers: Vague s3, s5 and s6 spoilers. Mostly common-known information, so  
don't worry about it unless you are *really* out of the loop.  
  
Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate the disappearance of Scully's shoes,  
resulting in a few major revelations.  
  
"Borrowing Hearts"  
by the X-Woman  
XWoman1121@aol.com  
  
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"I can't find my shoes."  
  
I don't even want to think about it. *She can't find her shoes?* We are missing  
our flight because she can't find her *shoes*?  
  
Hell, Scully.  
  
I give a small roll of my eyes to the woman before me. Dana Scully; reserved,  
stubborn, doctor, scientist...  
  
And she can't find her shoes.  
  
Somehow, I find this somewhat comedic. Especially compared the time schedule  
the two of us are on. Assistant Director Kersh, our new boss now that we have  
been reassigned from our old section, The X-Files, permanently it seems, has  
decided to send us two federal agents off to, what was it? Idaho? I can't  
quite remember. Funny, my photographic memory seems to be failing me at this  
moment. Very funny, since I can tell you every event that occurred when I got  
my tonsils removed at the age of five but... I can't seem to remember what state  
we are going to.  
  
It probably has something to do with the fact that I really don't care.  
  
Kersh is trying to get us away from the "norm" cases of the X-files. Cases that  
have to do with the paranormal, the supernatural... the just downright weird.  
  
Of course, investigating cow manure is the total opposite of anything that may  
have come up in the X-files. And, I have a feeling that makes Scully and my  
superiors very, very happy.  
  
I left the plane tickets in the car in my rush to come and grab Scully. We had  
been cutting it very close as it was, and now with Scully's "dilemma", I have a  
feeling that we *just might* miss that flight to... Kansas?  
  
I am still standing outside Scully's door looking in. Scully stands before me,  
her hands on her hips, her face set in a frown.  
  
"Well, Mulder, are you just going to stand there?"  
  
I sigh and come in the door, pushing it shut behind me. Scully goes immediately  
back to her search, tossing about clothing and rugs and moving appliances in  
hope of pulling her shoes out from *somewhere*. I toddle behind her, in not  
much of a hurry to assist her.  
  
"Don't you have *another* pair you could wear?"  
  
Scully snorts out of her nose, but doesn't answer, not pausing from her dig.  
Typical Scully. I wander around, peeking behind shelves and furniture to see  
where they might be.  
  
"I don't get it..." She is muttering. "I just wore them yesterday!" She  
stands, her small stature straight and strong, pushing her short copper hair  
away from her face.  
  
"Maybe the Borrowers got them." I comment, not looking up from my own search.  
  
Scully freezes, turning to face me. As I expect, she has her eyebrow raised,  
the well-known "Mulder-what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about" look plastering her  
pretty face. I let a tiny smile escape my lips, somewhat impressed that my  
comment had surprised her. Over the last seven years, one would assume all of  
the surprises had been leached from our arranged marriage-like relationship.   
But, instead, the two of us always keep the other guessing. And I believe we  
always will.  
  
"Borrowers, Scully." She continues to stare at me. "Scully, please do not tell  
me you don't know what a Borrower is."  
  
"Mulder, I don't know what a Borrower is."  
  
This time, it is me who snorts out of his nose. Poor Scully. So scientific, so  
unbelieving. I wonder, as the memories of my childhood began to roll back, how  
Scully could have made it through childhood without knowing what a Borrower was.   
These myths and stories that made up my childhood seemed to have lacked in  
Scully's, and I wonder how two people who were so different could have lasted  
this long without killing each other.  
  
"When we were kids, Samantha was the most forgetful child." I pause suddenly,  
not having realized where I was going with this story. I look up to see the  
look on  
Scully's face at the mention of my sister. Even though so much of our search  
with the X-files, our fight against the government, had been about my little  
sister, Scully has never learned much about her. She knows Samantha, but she  
doesn't *know* her. Not the way I did. Not the way that, after all she has  
been through, she deserves to know her.  
  
The obnoxious look on Scully's face has somewhat fleeted, and so I continue,  
content in knowing that she is listening. "She would get very upset, being only  
a little girl. So, my mother would tell her the Borrowers had probably taken  
whatever is was she was looking for, and that they will return it when they are  
done. It always cheered Samantha up, made her think that she was 'helping' the  
Borrowers by letting them keep her things for a while. Then, of course,  
whatever it was would eventually turn up and everything would go back to  
normal." I smile a tiny bit to myself, relishing one of the few memories I have  
of my sister. "Our mother used to tell us that the Borrowers lived in tiny  
houses in the walls, or under the floorboards, and that sometimes they need  
something... thimbles..." I smile, throwing a gesture at the woman before me.  
"Shoes. Whatever. They used them, and return them when they are done." I  
laugh a little, looking up at Scully. "I remember when Samantha was taken..."   
Shit. I'm regressing. But the look in Scully's eyes, that wonderful, kind,  
wanting look makes me not want to stop. Makes me think she wants to hear what I  
have to say.  
  
So I tell her.  
  
"I used to laugh at those stories, at how silly and childish they were but...  
when Samantha was taken, somewhere inside, I hoped it had been the *Borrowers*  
that had taken her... and that they would bring her back. Maybe if I never  
stopped looking, maybe if I found her somehow..." I shutter a little, that little  
memory, that little wish, having been lost in the back of my memory long ago.   
And yet, somehow, I resurfaced it with the disappearance of Dana Scully's  
*shoes*.  
  
I am looking down at my feet, and after a long moment of silence, I look up at  
Scully, and we continue our search for the lost shoes. Scully is very quiet,  
and I wonder what she is thinking. I pause to look her over, see if I can  
*somehow* read her... but she is not letting me. Seven years, one would think we  
could read each other like a book. But, we don't. We only read each other when  
it is allowed. Right now, it is not.  
  
It takes me a while to speak again, and by now Scully has moved her search into  
the kitchen, digging around cabinets. I stay in the living room, wanting to be  
alone. I look beneath the couch, and I am getting very annoyed over this.   
Scully wasn't speaking to me, her shoes were missing, and our flight left the  
airport ten minutes ago without us. Frankly, this whole situation is starting  
to piss me off.  
  
"Scully, did you check your bedroom?" I know it is a dumb-ass question, but at  
this point I am getting desperate.  
  
Scully does not answer. The noises from the kitchen just get louder and louder,  
until I am sure that the apartment next door is going to call the police over  
the racket. Suddenly, there is a loud *crash* that startles me, and I know  
there is something wrong.  
  
I get up and hurry over to the kitchen, poking my head in to see Scully, bent  
over a large mess off pans, her shoulders heaving gently as she grasps a wash  
towel in her hand, tighter than I have ever seen her hold onto anything before.   
And then she turns to me, her face streaked with tears... and suddenly I can read  
her just fine.  
  
And it scares me.  
  
"I am so sorry, Mulder. I am so sorry we didn't find her."  
  
Suddenly, my knees become very weak, and my stomach starts to do flip-flops and  
I start to realize that she is right... that this is the end, and we got out as  
empty handed as when we came in. I collapse against the doorway, staring at the  
woman across the room. She only looks back at me, her breath coming out in  
heaves, and she reaches up to wipe the tears from her fallen face.  
  
I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to go to her, to hold her tightly,  
tell her it is not her fault, that we *will* find her, that everything we have  
been through will not have been in vain.  
  
But I do not.  
  
Instead, I turn away, my own eyes filling with Scully's tears of despair. She  
cannot have a normal life. She has been abducted, abused, beaten, her beautiful  
spirit and amazing mind put under every possible influence; kidnapping, cancer...  
And here we are, seven years later... with nothing.  
  
I cannot have a normal life. My sister was taken, my *life* was taken. I will  
never be taken seriously in the FBI, my passion, ever again. I will fight and  
fail; I have been attacked, beaten, the Truth waved in my face and then snapped  
away without a second thought. I can no longer trust, no longer love. I have  
only Scully left and she... I have lost her now as well. She is not the Scully  
that walked into my basement office and told me that aliens couldn't exist.   
That Scully is dead. All we are now, are shells of the people we used to be.  
  
We are lost souls searching for a lost truth that shall never be.  
  
I find myself in Scully's bedroom. I can smell her in the air; what she has  
become. The innocence that she has lost.  
  
I can smell her tears.  
  
I glance around, looking for something to hit, to hurt, to yell and scream at.   
But all that I can find are a pile of suitcase bags on one wall, but I take the  
offer. I kick them, tear them away from their home by the wall and fling them  
away from me, in some futile effort to make me feel better. And, soon I have  
made a horrible, pointless mess and now I am seated on her bed, in the mess of  
her room, smelling Scully's tears mixed with my own.  
  
I am a murderer; a murderer of spirits, of minds, of souls. I have robbed  
Scully of hers; and me of my own.  
  
"Damn you, Scully." I hear myself whisper. "Why couldn't you have just gone  
and been a doctor."  
  
It is then that I realize I can feel her behind me, and I shut my eyes, cursing  
myself as I had her. She would never know I didn't blame her... just as my sister  
would never know I didn't blame *her* either. I didn't blame my father, my  
mother... I blamed myself. Not for Samantha's abduction, or Scully's  
disappearance and cancer, or my father's death. But for the fact that,  
afterwards, I couldn't even successfully keep their memories, their souls, or  
their spirits alive. I blamed myself because I had failed in the only quest I  
had been given. To find the Truth.  
  
She comes beside me, and I reach for her, as if she is the only thing I have  
left. And she is. She accepts me and sits beside me, and I hug her fiercely,  
my head buried into her chest as I sob, not wanting to ever let her go, in fear  
that I shall lose her forever. She hangs onto me, my head grasped in her hands,  
and suddenly, I hear it.  
  
Her heartbeat.  
  
My tears cease, and I listen to the gentle murmur of her heart against my ear.   
It is strong, hard, stubborn; much like she is. And I don't need to see her  
heart to know what it looks like; broken, torn apart, used... all of the horrible  
things that has ever happened to her scratched into her being, the only thing  
that makes her real, alive. But, yet, it beats, strong and loud and it tells me  
that, no matter what, it will continue on. It beats for this moment, and it  
will beat for the next, and I know that well. And I hear the song it sings, and  
I believe the words it says.  
  
And again my tears fall upon a tortured heart, but a heart that I love with all  
mine, that I will give my life to. And as she holds me, I understand that,  
somehow, I am not the killer I so thought I was. As long as Scully's heart  
beats, as long as she stands by my side, I have not lost her. And, I have not  
lost Samantha, or my father. They continue in me, for the Truth does not need  
to remember them. I do. And as long as they live in my memory, they also live  
in Scully's. And, as long as they live on in Scully, as long her beating heart  
echoes through my body and her own, and sings to me, they shall live on forever.  
They shall live on until the end of time.  
  
"Oh, Mulder." I hear her say. I pull away and look into her face, but her eyes  
are cast across the room, to the corner where the suitcases lie. I follow her  
gaze, a tiny smile erupting over my face at what I see lying there.  
  
Her shoes.  
  
She turns back to me and she smiles, and I understand now. Our search is over,  
and we have found what we were looking for. And, that is the game of life.  
  
We must continue to look. For those who turn away and give up never find what  
they are looking for, but those who continue to seek will find.  
  
"I guess the Borrowers are done with them." She says, and stands to gather her  
toppled shoes. I watch her move, as she stoops to pick up the black heels and  
then she stands, in that mess of suitcases, shoes in hand, just looking. Like a  
flower growing in garbage dump. "I wonder how they got over here..." She muses,  
turning her eyes to me.  
  
And, I understand more, through the eyes of this woman. I am not a murderer. I  
do not rob those of what matters most to them. I am simply a Borrower, and I  
take what I need to continue on. Scully's heart will continue on for her, and I  
will borrow it, to help me. Help me move on myself, until I can finally find a  
heart of my own.  
  
She smiles at me, as if she knows what I am thinking, and glances back for only  
a second. Suddenly, her body freezes ridged, her eyes widen. I leap up quickly  
and rush to her side, and she looks to me, then back at the floor.  
  
"Mulder, look."  
  
I do, and I see it. One tiny, tiny shoe, lying discarded on the ground, under  
the mess of suitcases. I crouch down, inspecting the shoe closer. It is no  
bigger than my fingernail, lying on it's side, a tiny black shoe that looks like  
it is made out of a little piece of thin leather. I look back up at Scully, who  
is clutching her shoes to her chest tightly. And, suddenly, I have to laugh to  
myself. I remember how I used to laugh at Samantha for believing in these  
things, and suddenly I realize that wherever Samantha is she is laughing back  
just as hard at me, for not believing. And I suddenly know how Scully feels,  
for I, a Borrower, have borrowed her soul for just a second.  
  
And, suddenly, I can understand why sometimes, she does not believe.  
  
I stand, grasping her hand, and we leave the little shoe untouched. I have my  
theories, and I know that Scully has her own but, for once, we will not discuss  
it. For, there are some things that cannot be discussed.  
  
And the borrowing of shoes and hearts are among them.  



End file.
